Trying to adapt to a different emotional matrix hasn’t worked out. It was as if I needed to find ways to perceive, out of the corners of my eyes, some very fine embroidery, and to make out the design in it, which I really did not see. Thus I would feel like I was turning into a ghost before my own eyes, wandering around like the walking dead, whilst feeling that what I really perceived we could not really talk about (since nobody was interested in it), but feeling, nonetheless that I was socially obliged to treat all other people’s trivialities as if they were monumentally real. This is what I felt like when I tried to do the practicum for the Dip Ed. It was as if I had to oblige to take on the role of masochist, denying my own perceptions and realities whilst magnifying those of others in order to appease them.
These appeasement efforts had no connection whatsoever to anything I really felt or thought. They seemed socially and ideologically necessary for me, in terms of the structure of the system and what it required, but they meant nothing of intrinsic worth. I found I had been switching fundamental parts of my mind off, whilst trying to suddenly and dramatically grow other parts, in order just to achieve a very radical effect, the effect of proving my ability to perform effectively within a culturally contrived matrix that had little subjective meaning to me.
When I spoke to my recent Zimbabwean friend, I knew immediately that we have tacitly agreed on what is centre and what is periphery. I don’t feel strained and contorted by the relationship. My blood flows thick and strong. It is as if part of my very mind fading into a state of vagueness and a feeling of debility were suddenly revived.
These appeasement efforts had no connection whatsoever to anything I really felt or thought. They seemed socially and ideologically necessary for me, in terms of the structure of the system and what it required, but they meant nothing of intrinsic worth. I found I had been switching fundamental parts of my mind off, whilst trying to suddenly and dramatically grow other parts, in order just to achieve a very radical effect, the effect of proving my ability to perform effectively within a culturally contrived matrix that had little subjective meaning to me.
When I spoke to my recent Zimbabwean friend, I knew immediately that we have tacitly agreed on what is centre and what is periphery. I don’t feel strained and contorted by the relationship. My blood flows thick and strong. It is as if part of my very mind fading into a state of vagueness and a feeling of debility were suddenly revived.
And in other news, today, I fought my new training partner, Ruth, who is as formidable as hell. She hit me half force on the nose and it began to bleed a little. That woman has all sorts of power – but I’m slightly better on defence.
